January 6, 2010 5:24 pm

Courtesy of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Gary “Green River Killer” Ridgway may soon enjoy the right to vote. And Robert Yates Jr., who also had a nasty habit of murder by the dozen.

And any number of other murderers, rapists and other predators now housed in Washington’s prisons.
That is the absurd result of a 9th Circuit Court panel decision Tuesday that ordered the state to let all inmates vote – on the grounds that some might be imprisoned as part of a pattern of racial discrimination.

State Attorney General Rob McKenna has already announced he will appeal this ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. It seems likely the high court will take an interest in it, because three other federal appeals courses have ruled to the contrary in similar cases.

Tuesday’s “Let Ridgway Vote” decision resulted from a long-running lawsuit filed by several Washington felons. Their lawyers persuaded two judges on a three-judge panel that the federal Voting Rights Act should void the Washington Constitution’s prohibition of inmate voting. Nearly every other state enforces a similar prohibition.
The Voting Rights Act has a long, complex history. Originally written to prevent Jim Crow states from cheating blacks out of ballots, it is designed to protect minorities from discrimination at the polls.
Suffice it to say that many perfectly competent federal judges have not read the law the way the 9th Circuit panel did. As the dissenting 9th Circuit judge said, his court is “a crowd of one amongst the circuits.”

The premise of the ruling is that Washington’s criminal justice system is so saturated with racism – its police, prosecutors and judges so eager to search, arrest, charge and convict blacks – that disenfranchising inmates is tantamount to disenfranchising minorities.

That premise is based in turn on two studies done by two University of Washington sociologists that purportedly establish rampant racism in every corner of the state’s criminal justice system.

The court’s reliance on those two studies could be criticized in various ways: One study covered only Seattle, for example. It concluded, among other things, that the inclination of Seattle police to focus on street crime was evidence of discrimination. As the dissent noted, a more reasonable conclusion might be that such a focus reflected an interest in protecting the most people possible.

We have no doubt that discrimination comes into play in the criminal justice system. We do doubt that Washington’s police and prosecutors are Neanderthals who would have been at home in 1950s Mississippi. The discrimination that does exist should be fixed – at the street level. It shouldn’t be “fixed” by letting duly convicted, imprisoned lawbreakers help choose the people who write the laws.

A vote is a vote — think about it — early release, pardon in exchange for a vote. May be next a person can leave instructions in their Wills granting permission for designated parties to cast their votes for generations to come. Only in Washington.

I could be wrong but I think all the “inmates can vote!” stuff is a misinterpretation. (Although one I’ve seen in multiple places today, though not anything to my knowledge written by a lawyer) I think this decision was intended to address the part of the law that prohibits felons from voting until their civil rights are restored, which in Washington state can be an amorphous and indefinite period of time.

If inmates have served their time I see no good reason their voting rights should not resume. It’s not a risk to public safety.

Interesting case though. This is a quote that we could all stand to pay a bit more attention to:

African Americans in Washington State were over nine times
more likely to be in prison than Whites, even though the ratio
of Black to White arrest for violent offenses was only 3.72:1,
suggesting that substantially more than one half of Washington
State’s racial disproportionality in its criminal justice system
cannot be explained by higher levels of criminal
involvement as measured by violent crime arrest statistics.

A split Ninth Circuit decision that invalidated a Washington law banning incarcerated felons from voting drew much attention yesterday and prompted predictions that it would be reheard en banc or by the Supreme Court. The Associated Press (via the Washington Post) reports on the decision and reactions to it. The Seattle Times confirms that the State of Washington will appeal the ruling. If the case doesn’t go en banc at the Ninth Circuit, Kent Scheidegger of Crime & Consequences says it will be a “slam-dunk for Supreme Court review.” Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy agrees, adding that “[a]mong interesting story lines to watch as this case goes forward is whether and how the Solicitor General of the United States might get involved.”

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